Our latest episode is part two of our conversation with Dr Jeff Standridge from Arkansas in the USA.

Right. So round two with Dr Jeff Standridge, this guy that seems to be able to, you know, he's a, I don't know, he's like a mini me Elon Musk. I don't even know if that's the right reference, but a fascinating guy. So yeah.

You obviously were away when we recorded this, so you now have had a chance to have a little look. So yeah. Yeah.

Full of amazing insights. So yeah. Well, let's get started.

So basically if you, if you're involved in building a product or, or starting a company or anything like that, this is, or actually if you're running a company and you're part of the leadership team. Yeah. Very, very good.

Good gems. Think about starting one, you know, you literally have got an idea for, for something and some fundamental basics and principles and values to think upon and Jeff's got some really good insights. So yeah.

Let's, let's have a listen. Sounds good. So let's move on then to innovation.

The Interview – Part 2

Now you're, you're something that's called an innovation consultant. So I guess from my point of view, what is that and how the devil do you stay at the forefront of innovation? Well, I guess partly on, on top of everything else that you do as well.

Well, so, so first of all, we start by defining innovation, right? Innovation in the way we define it is planned change that is, is directed at either more pleasant or more efficient or effective ways of doing things or doing things that substantially reduce the transaction cost of doing, doing a particular business.

 So it's, it's planned to change. And so that then connotes or suggests that there's a process around that plan change. And so we, we actually are, are, are more what I would consider a process consultants for innovation than, you know, than innovation, you know, in and of itself.

We stay on top of a lot of technological innovations and what companies are doing to drive innovation, the processes they're using, and, and, and we kind of assimilate those. We built kind of our own end to end innovation process. It's kind of a three-step process, you know, disrupting the status quo, creating massive value and then making it stick.

So it's problem identification, it's, it's a solution design, and then it's organisational change to implement that solution, you know? And so that's really what we do when we're working with an organisation. We may run an innovation sprint that's just focused on painstorming, so to speak, to help them identify the biggest challenges they have in their business. And once we identify the three or four of those, then we may take them on a, on then a design sprint to, to begin designing, designing solutions to solve those challenges.

And so that's when we work with an organisation on the innovation front, it's to help them make their organisations better using the process of innovation or to create new products and services. Oh, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, of course. The challenge there is that change there being central, probably a core to that, particularly in bigger businesses, it's very difficult to do and it takes an awful long time. That's right.

Yes, that's exactly right. Very difficult to do. Yeah.

How do you, do you coach people through that change then? Or is that where you go, well, this is where the system is and we, we take you through the steps. Yeah. Is it people change or is it, is it process change as well? Yeah.

And many times it's both, right? So I actually came to the world of innovation and entrepreneurship by being an, an entrepreneur and a corporate change agent. So I, you know, entrepreneurship is, is doing entrepreneurial things, but within the safety net of a corporate salary, so to speak. And in fact, I was in the mergers and acquisition world for the company I worked for that took me to Europe and China and Australia and, and Brazil and what have you either starting or acquiring companies within the portfolio of this, of this larger organisation.

And then I was kind of a change agent within the company, you know, we're, we're currently working with about a $50 million company that's, that's in a couple of different locations. They're a very distributed workforce with their entire sales organisation, not just their sales, many of their ops functions even spread around the, around the country. And we're, we're going through a complete organisational transformation process with them and, and helping them kind of re-envision the future, re, re hone their strategy.

We've restructured the organisation with a completely new set of top leaders in the organisation. They're bringing in a new CEO. And so we've been working with them since the latter part of last year and we'll continue working with them throughout this year to really drive just a completely new organisation forward.

Wow. That's a brave move, isn't it to, to re-shell and kind of wipe clean as it were, start again. It really is.

It really is. I mean, they've, they've completely changed the top layer of the organisation, the kind of the senior level direct reports to the CEO, even bringing in a new CEO. And it's the thing about it though, is that they've probably, they're probably had their record month in April, and I haven't seen May yet, but probably, probably May as well.

So they're continuing to just deliver phenomenal results. They're growing very, very rapidly, but it's one of the classic examples of what got you here won't get you there. And so they've kind of got that $50 million, $40 to $50 million level, but they want to be $150 million.

And they knew that to get there, they were going to have to break apart the organisation and put it all back together again. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, that's a perfect segue into leadership generally actually, because again, we, I've seen this for a long time. They're good leaders. They're bad leaders.

And one of the challenges with the leadership generally is the fact that yes, it's a choice, but there's no support or training necessarily. I think the stat is something like 80% of all leaders have never had any sort of formal training. So, I mean, you know, how a business gets to 50 million without kind of a leadership structure that basically is, doesn't have it, that any sort of formal capacity to understand what leadership should be.

Not only that, leadership, if you take it even three years ago, five years ago, the change has been exponential in terms of what's expected, how the swing-o-meter, if you like, has gone from, you know, the company having all the power to the employees having more power and then kind of centring now somewhere in the middle where it's a, it's a relationship and that, you know, kind of we're working on it kind of scenario. So what, what as a leadership coach, what, what are you seeing? What are you experiencing right now across the board? Are you seeing the same sort of thing in the states with the organisations that you're working with? Again, we're still hitting up against this kind of we're putting leaders in place. And actually, the problem is the fact we're not supporting, we're not leading the leaders properly.

Yeah. So I have a little bit of a different take on that. You know, the research that where I got into the leadership world was as a young graduate student back in the, in the 90s, I was studying the differences in top performers and in the health care world at that time and average performers and, and ended up as a result of that research, being asked to move into an IT company to do the same research.

And, and, and I was looking at what are the differentiators of success? And what I found was, was that it had nothing to do with academic credentials, with certifications and letters behind one's name or how many hours of classroom training they had. It really boiled down to behaviour and behaviours that centre around two different concepts, results and relationships. And so each of us has, has tendencies.

Some of us are more results oriented and some of us are more relationship oriented. But people who are consistently successful, either as individual contributors or even as leaders, are able to balance those two very, very well. If I focus on results at the expense of relationships, I will experience wild success very quickly until I alienate everyone around me who's responsible for helping me maintain those results.

And then I lose them both. But by the same token, if I focus on relationships at the expense of results, people will love me until they lose respect for me because I can't do what I say I'm going to do when I say I'm going to do it and I can't deliver consistent results. So it's this constant tightrope.

And, and I think leaders, everyone has the responsibility of owning their tendencies in that regard, discovering them and then owning them and then creating mechanisms around themselves to help them maintain that balance. As a leader, you know, the, the, the most, the, the most ineffective form of education or training or, or skill development that occurs is in a classroom setting with a talking head in front of the, in front of the room, right? The next, but, but some people learn, okay, that way it's just the least effective for the most people. The second form is some form of self-development where I do some assessment.

I get some feedback. I figure out what I'm strong in, what I'm weak in. Maybe I leverage someone to kind of give me some feedback.

And then I go and begin to do some self-learning to fill in those gaps. The third form is through relationships. I surround myself with people and give them permission to be critical with me and to give me feedback and to hold me accountable and provide me some coaching.

And maybe it's a formal coaching relationship. Maybe it's more of an informal mentoring relationship, but I seek out those mentors versus the company pairing me with them. I actually take ownership of it.

And then the final way is experiences. You know, when I, when I was asked to move to the UK and oversee the acquisition of 21 companies in seven countries, I was five years out from being a respiratory therapist in a clinical environment. I had no business background, but my leader saw something in me and she put me in a situation where I was kind of sink or swim based upon my experiences.

And so, you know, that continuum of classroom training to self-development, to relationships and mentoring and coaching to actually new experiences. I think we all as leaders have to leverage that continuum in proper proportions to our learning styles to be able to develop and change with the times. Do you think there's a huge amount of fear in leadership because of those areas are not all covered or understood or talked about enough? It's too formal.

It's a leadership. Basically, you need to tell people what to do and they'll do the work for you, just going to manage the people. It seems to be a very simplistic approach.

Do you think that the fear element, ego as well, of course, but is that the biggest problem we face? Yeah, I think it's fear and ego. And, you know, I do agree with you that we're not doing a good job of supporting our leaders. But the way I would support a leader is to expect them to have a development plan.

And oh, by the way, I'm going to give you, I want you to go, I want you to go assess your own weaknesses. I want you to get feedback and then I want you to identify those areas of opportunity or those development needs. And I want you to put together a development plan.

Then I want you to come sit down with me and I'm going to assess your ability in assessing yourself, your accuracy in assessing yourself. And I'm going to give you some additional feedback and make some additional development recommendations. And then you're going to go execute that plan versus me bringing in, you know, a trainer to come and train you, because what you may need is different than what she may need and what he may need and what have you.

And I can't find that many trainers. So let's build a plan that's customised for you. And I want you to take ownership in building that plan and I'll help you refine it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it takes quite a lot of guts to be that vulnerable. Oh, you know, it's interesting you say that.

So when I started my career in the corporate world, in this IT company, I was 30 years old or so. Fresh out of being literally a respiratory therapist in a hospital, and I never will forget, I was sitting in a meeting with my new team, I'd maybe been there two weeks and we were talking, I don't remember the topic, but we were talking about a project that maybe hadn't gone as we planned or something like that. And the executive was a female leader, the executive of that group.

She said, yeah, you know what? That was a failure on my part. That's on me. I let you guys down.

I'll take responsibility for that. I'm going to correct that. I was blown away.

I had never heard such strength and such vulnerability at the same time in a meeting like that where someone stood up and said, I failed you guys and I'm going to correct that. It had a huge, had a huge impact on me, had a huge impact. And vulnerability and leadership has become quite a hot topic, hasn't it? It's become, again, much more acceptable, I think partly because men are talking about a lot more because they can.

I mean, so many other reasons, I suppose there's thousands of reasons. But it's a very powerful tool, this vulnerability. You know, even I think Steven Jobs was alluding to it when he said, employ smart, don't employ smart people and tell them what to do.

That ultimately saying as a leader, be vulnerable, employ these people and help them elevate them because you can, but they'll elevate you at the same time. That's the whole point, you know, as the tide rises, all boats should. I talked about results and relationships a few moments ago.

I'm a results guy. Yeah, you know, I do a pretty good job at relationships, but when it really hits the fan or when the pressure's on, I'm going to err toward the results. So I had someone that I hired.

Her name was Brenda. I called her Brynn. She was about 10 years, maybe 15 years my senior.

And when I was this young, snot-nosed executive really trying to climb the ranks, I depended on her. She would come into my office and she would sit down and she would she kind of let out a big sigh, you know, and I'd say, well, Brynn, what's going on? And she said, well, you know, in the town hall today, when you said A, B and C, I say, yeah. She said, well, there were some people who didn't hear A, B and C. They heard X, Y and Z. And I was like, oh, no, that's not what I needed them to hear at all.

And then I would say, what I need to do? Well, I think you need to go have a conversation with these folks and ask them what they thought about the meeting and give them the opportunity to share that feedback. But Brynn, that's great. I'll go do that now, you know.

So she really helped me kind of walk that balance. And had I, I say that she was probably the reason I didn't get fired the first three years I was there. Yeah, we've all had one of those.

I had one of those as well. Her name is Ruth. I just call her Ruth because I think if I called her anything else, she'd have hit me.

But she was the same. She influenced me hugely because she had she based all of her work on principle, on value and what it meant to her personally to achieve. She had goals that she wanted to do, and that was super powerful, I think, almost like a coach within a coach, within a system, you know, within a mentor.

And she'd done jobs. And I think one of the roles that she had she led a team of 150 people. So, you know, the whole business that I was working in or the section of it was only 63.

So, you know, she was wildly more experienced in some areas. So it would have been stupid for me not to listen. So, yeah, yeah, I really resonate with that.

Well, that's really great insight there, Jeff. Thank you so much. Just a couple more last quick questions, really.

There seems to be a big fascination. Now, these are kind of more personal about you as an individual, I guess, really. So fascination with morning routines, you know, there's 5 a.m. clubs, there's people who get up and the first thing they do, I think Mark Wahlberg gets in an ice bath and all this kind of stuff, these morning routines which set them up for the day.

And we all know morning routines are very important. Is this something that you believe in? Is it something you do? Have you got one? And does it work? For the most part, I have a routine. I'm not the I'm not the, you know, the 75 hard or the 5 a.m. club or the ice bath guy.

But I do generally go to bed at roughly the same time, and I tend to get up at roughly the same time. I haven't I seldom set an alarm anymore. And, you know, unless I know that I need to be up for a very specific reason and then I'll set an alarm.

But I'm usually awake before the alarm goes off. But I'm usually I start waking up around four thirty or five. I may not get out of bed until five thirty or six.

But I may lay there and just kind of gear up for the day. I use I then I go and hit the shower and fix a cup of coffee and I come to my office. My wife won't let me work from home.

She said that's her office. And I infringe on her territory. And so eight years ago, when I left the corporate world to start my own thing, she I worked from home for about three months and she was like, yeah, that's not happening anymore.

So I have I have an office. It's only about a five-minute drive. And it's but it's downtown on the high street here.

And so I you know, it's kind of my place and I enjoy it. I come here. It's like home.

Yeah, I turn on I turn on CNBC and I watch the early start of the market and answer a few emails from the night before and then go about my day. There are some days when I'm at my best, there's usually an exercise routine. Yeah, I was a cyclist for a number of years and then I started flying and that kind of took my time away to cycle.

But yeah, I do generally have some kind of physical activity. It may only be just a few minutes. And so that's kind of my morning routine is just kind of gearing up for the day and then I have one usually at the end of the day when I when I am able to get home at a decent hour is to usually I'll go outside.

We've got an outdoor living area kind of in the garden area and I'll go out there and sit and might have a refreshment and reflect on the day. But yeah, I think, you know, I think the thing that probably contributes the most benefit to me is having the consistency of going to bed and getting up. Yeah.

Those two things. I think it's true for so much in life is actually having that consistency enables you to achieve so much more because you know what's coming and you plan for it. And for sure.

Yeah. I mean, I guess similar, really. I don't I'm not 5-0 in club ice bath and all that kind of stuff.

I try and exercise regularly and I try and go away to exercise. So there's a place to do that rather than at home or anything like that, because I think that's important to do that. Obviously, children, dogs, you know, those kinds of things they add into throwing the routine out of sync.

For sure. Same as internet engineers as well. But yeah, yeah.

But yeah, I guess I've got an interest in this because there's no one way anyway and everyone's got their own style. And I think it's not necessarily something that is a precursor for great leadership that you get up at five o'clock in the morning, because if you sit for two hours and waste it just looking at social media, then that's not really helping you. So there needs to be practice behind it, of course.

Yeah. I like to talk about being intentional, you know, being intentional about what you do. And, you know, I am intentional about getting in the bed at an early hour.

I may finish the day out with a brief video streamed TV show or something before I finally turn out the lights. But I turn out the lights pretty much at the at the same time every night and usually don't have a hard time falling asleep and usually wake up on my own as a result. And so I think that intentionality is probably more important than what you're actually intentional at.

And it's good for the human body and mind, actually, to have that structure, isn't it, to have that intentionality around it as well. I certainly find that myself is I'm at my best when I've exercised, and I have a better structure during the day. I have a plan and I planned for the day.

For sure. You know, I have a I have a room right back, right back, right back there. There we go.

And I have a couch and a telly. And so there are days where I've been very busy for two or three days and then I'll look and I've got an hour break in my calendar and I'll just go in there. I won't turn on the telly.

Usually I'll turn off the light and I might just lie down on the couch and just ruminate. You know, I might just let my brain slow down and, you know, won't take a nap. I'm not a big napper, but I but I'll just sit in the dark and clear my mind.

And when I when I go on vacation or I go on holiday, all of my team members know that once I go to the beach and I've got about 48 hours of not doing anything, my mind gets clear and then all these ideas start coming out. So then I start texting all of my teammates and we could do this and we could do this and back to your American optimism guy. Right.

And so I've got business partners in several different businesses and they all joke about having a Jeff Standards vacation support group because I have literally been in four text threads with four different business partners at the same time while I'm sitting on the beach with different ideas for each of those businesses. And they're like, can you not go away again? So already go away for like a day and a half. Exactly.

That's right. That's right. Don't let him go away for more than 48 hours.

Actually, I found myself I my family used to say there was a sort of a two- or three-day period when I used to go away and I needed that just to decompress. Yeah. And I started then my holiday two- or three-days in.

But conversely, on the other end of the holiday, I started to ramp up a couple of days. I have found the exact same thing. So I will take a day off, maybe a day or two before we leave.

Yeah. And I'll ramp down to the out of office on my email. Right.

And then I will come back a day, two days before I start to work and I'll ramp back up. I found the exact same thing that off ramp and on ramp kind of process is it's heaven, quite frankly. It makes a huge difference, actually, and takes so much pressure out of that kind of kick in day.

Anyway, your time is precious. And there's one last thing, if I may. And it's just we haven't really touched on the side of education.

So we'll just briefly, if I may, just indulge that a little bit. What as an educator, with all the things that you do for the Arkansas University and the young minds that you're teaching, could you give me then three things that you would pass on to the future generation of entrepreneurs and innovators that would become part of their kit bag of success? Sure, sure. And I'd have to the first one I have to borrow from my friend, Ash Maria, who said, don't fall in love with the solution, fall in love with the problem you're trying to solve.

And so, you know, for the in the entrepreneurial finance class that I teach, I put a big focus on, you know, let's define the problem that you're trying to solve. Let's quantify that problem and let's test it and see if it's business, if it's viable from a business perspective, we can build a viable business around it. So that process of problem identification, customer discovery, quantification of the problem is really huge.

The second one is I teach entrepreneurial finance, but I spend the first two weeks teaching personal finance because what I have found is I see entrepreneurs who struggle to be successful purely because they don't know how to manage a chequebook, even their home chequebook, and they run their business like they run their home. And, you know, in America, we have a terrible financial problem. The vast majority of Americans cannot incur a one-thousand-dollar unplanned expense without going into debt.

Two thirds of Americans spend more than they earn and use credit cards to finance the difference. And so I spend two weeks teaching just the basics of personal finance before we ever start teaching finance, entrepreneurial finance. And so that's number two.

And then the third one is I believe that we should spend more time and it's been my experience as well. We should spend more time teaching people how to find and utilise mentors than we do trying to train older, more experienced people to be mentors. Yeah.

And companies that try to create a mentor match program, they say, yeah, we're going to pair you with someone. What if I don't like this guy? What if he doesn't like me? So we could do a better job of teaching younger people how to go and find mentors in their lives, how to evaluate where they need mentors, how to find those mentors and how to use those mentors. And it probably never requires the utterance of, would you be my mentor? You know, you never have to have that conversation, because when I ask them, would you be my mentor? That shifts the responsibility psychologically to them.

Yeah. Where the best, the better question is, hey, I really respect what you've been able to do. Can I buy you a cup of coffee or breakfast or lunch and just pick your brain? I've got a few questions I'd love to ask you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Much better approach. Yeah.

So those three things, love the love, love the problem and not the solution. Fall in love with the problem. Learn how to manage your own finances, personal finances first so that you can then learn how to manage your business finances.

And number three, get good at knowing what you don't know and finding and utilising mentors to help you fill the gaps. Absolutely. Powerful, powerful stuff.

Jeff, thank you so much. It has been an absolute privilege to have this time with you and I'm really grateful for you taking the time out of your busy schedule to allow this as well. I think there is so much there.

I mean, we scratch the surface on so much and there is so much more that I would love to love to talk to you about. And perhaps we can have you on again another time. That sounds great.

I appreciate it. It's been an honour and a pleasure spending time with you. And I'd be honoured to come back anytime.

That's fantastic. Jeff, all the best. And yeah, we'll I'm sure we'll be talking again soon.

Let me just say that if anybody wants to reach out, I'm available on LinkedIn, very active on LinkedIn or jeffs@innovationjunkie.com.

Absolutely. Yes.

And I'll make sure as well that I put all the details about your books and websites and things like that so people can if they want to reach out and contact you, they'll be able to do so. So again, Jeff, thank you so much. Enjoy the rest of your week.

Bye. You too. Bye.

The Debrief – Part 2

Now you've obviously met him in part one, so you've got to know this guy and all he can do. So part two. OK, we didn't cover quite as much stuff, but my goodness, a lot more business relevant stuff, though, I think, which was relevant stuff, which was really, really interesting.

Yeah. Yeah. The guys obviously seem quite a lot involved.

I was impressed with the kind of because I didn't know this chap before agreed to have him on as a guest. But it's the experience that this guy's got with, you know, taking the first example he talks about is this 50 million business that they want to double the size of it. I mean, that's not a small job to do.

You know, what I found really interesting about that was the, you know, because obviously I started in the office, so I it's that's my baby. If it gets to that size, the and I remember I think it was Stephen Bartlett talking about it as well, where you step down and the guy from GymShark, I can't remember his name now, but where they've stepped down. Yeah, yeah.

They've stepped down from the CEO role and let someone else handle that. And there's part of it, it's like, oh, that's I mean, that's really brave. And also, I mean, very results driven where you're going, I'm not the right person for this.

We need to find someone that either has experience or is the right person to take this over. That's unbelievable. So the change management of that, you know, so watch yourself.

Yeah, well, you know, if we get to the 50 million to 150 million, I'm all over that. That's fine. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You crack on. I'm going to sit in the background and I'll cope the hell out of other stuff just for fun. Other fun projects, passion projects.

Exactly. But yeah, it was the fact that he's sort of, you know, he was talking about being an agent for change and being more of an intrapreneur within companies. And that I do feel is change within a company is hard, obviously.

And maybe you do actually need something that's quite a big event. So, you know, like getting rid of the C-suite and bringing new people in is such a massive event. But it will encourage everyone to be a bit more open minded and go, oh, right, well, we need to.

Yeah, things are changing. It's not just carry on with the same old. So, yeah, because one of the first things you think about this, well, they must have failed.

Well, hang on a minute. No, that's not necessarily case. You know, you go to a doctor and, you know, go to a GP and they'll get you to a certain level.

But beyond there, it's, you know, you go to a consultant and you have your eyes done. It's not that that doctor didn't fail. It's just not his specialism or her specialism.

It's this doctor, you know, Dr Sarah Smith. She is an absolute specialist in there. Well, surely you'd rather want to go and do that.

Now, by that stage, there'll be, you know, the CEO isn't necessarily the person who runs the company anymore. There's shareholders and other leadership team. And if they're all saying, well, but you're right, I think it takes an incredibly brave person to go.

Do you know what? Failure, I don't see this as failure as the CEO, I see this is, you know, I've got the vision, I've got the empathy, I've got the understanding to go, I can move on to something else. I did this business to 50 million and that's my, you know, I'm cool with that. Yeah, yeah.

So if but, you know, if you're happy with that and you just you want to continue and be at that level, that's fine. If you've got a different view and the other thing that he was talking about when he was mentioning about leadership and the two different times while you two different types. Sorry.

So are you results or are you relationship driven? And also, what do you then default back to in terms of pressure and how you need to know your weakness? And, you know, because you can work on these skills, you can say, actually, I do need to be more results driven because I'm too much on the relationships. But if you know your weakness, then you can step out of the way and get someone else in that can help. Yeah.

Or you can. Leadership. Yeah, that's just great leadership to be able to go, I've got a hole where I need to fill it.

Yeah. It's just smart. Yeah.

And I think we do get, you know, our own egos and arrogance sometimes get in the way of those things where you're going, well, actually, I, I want to keep my hands on the wheel. I want to keep the control because this is this is mine and or I want to be the CEO. You know, I'm much better if I'm actually in design and working on the product, but I want to have the title of CEO and that's what's important.

So in which case you're not you're not going to reach the things that you want because, you know, you get to the edge of your weaknesses, don't you? And that's where you start to fall down and things get more difficult. Yeah. We had a consultant I know called Tim Threipland, and he talks about leading on the edge and about pushing on your edges.

That's where you really find out, you know, kind of where your weaknesses are and you should be continually pushing to hit those edges all the time and then doing something about it. You know, he said, you know, that was something that he talks about a huge amount, actually, Tim, really lovely guy. But yeah, I agree.

I think it's that having the ability to spot those. I'm not so good at that. How good are we, you know, in all of our different roles, you know, as an office manager, you know, what are the things you kind of go, you know, I should be really good at these things, but that's a weakness.

How do you address that? You know, or do you go now? Do you know what doesn't come up that much or I'll leave that for another time? Or do you make that part of your personal development or is it well, I know that's going to be a problem. So you put something in place to try and counteract that or you'll be honest with your team, sit in front and say, look, I'm not really great at that. I did this once and I think it worked out OK.

I'm not really great at that bit. But if that comes up, then we work on that together. Are you comfortable with that? Yeah, yeah, fine.

No problem at all, you know, whatever. So it's yes, it's knowing you're we did this a lot with the GB rifle team. You know, it's we focus on owning your own performance.

And that's partly, you know, to say you can't if you're failing at something or if you're you have a bad shoot or you're dropping points or whatever, you don't blame someone else. But also it's having that responsibility. And it's going back to sort of one of the things that Jeff mentioned in the first part about, you know, 100 percent accountability for your own actions.

And it's going, well, I want to do something, but my weaknesses mean that I can't get past that. So, yeah, do you learn? And it's knowing actually where. Is this something that you could improve at or something you should improve at, or is it something where you go, that's just not going to be part of my skill base, so I'll get someone in, as you said, to cover it. But it's owning your own performance and being brave enough and being a good enough leader to accept that and not be the I know everything person.

Because the other thing as well, and I had this where, if you're embedded with your team and you're working quite closely with him rather than sitting in an office and, you know, kind of just see them once a week, they will know this anyway, your team, they will see where the areas where because of your behaviour, because of your actions, because of the outcomes, they will go, yeah, we can kind of sell.

So if you kind of gloss over that or pretend that doesn't exist or if you've got some sort of emotional response to them questioning that, they know a good team, smart team will know that. So it's far better to go be honest and right up front and be vulnerable and go, I am really crap at Excel, but I don't really use it that much. So is anybody here got any skills and they can support me with that being vulnerable? How much trust is that? Well, he's asking me, she's asking me.

And yeah, I've got some skills so I can really help with that. And that's good for the team. That's good for what we're trying to do.

And that's not kissing up to the boss. That's actually just, you know, kind of you can't be goalie, defender, midfielder, striker. You can't do it all.

One person running around against their team, it's crazy. So, yeah. But I think that it's a really interesting point you went on to there that it's again, it's sort of like an unwritten thing where it's, you know, you know how someone is and how they behave and the team dynamic should be that it's safe enough that you can sort of you can get things done without necessarily having to say them.

And I thought that sort of relates a bit to the mentorship stuff that Jeff and you were talking about, where I really love Jeff's thing that you don't, if you want to mentor, you don't find someone and go, will you be my mentor? Because, you know, yeah, that's the mentorship as well isn't necessarily one person. It's anyone that influences you. I thought that was it was really interesting because you were talking, you know, he had, was it Brenda? And you mentioned Ruth that who wasn't actually a mentor but was someone that influenced you and that made you think about things in a different way.

And that's what's so important is that you have these people that it really is throw different things at you that you might not have thought about. I think the commonality between those two examples was that were based on values and principles, both the impact that they had for Jeff. It was, you know, she stood up and went, you know, I don't know how to do that.

I need help. She was being vulnerable. And it's like when you first experience somebody, you think, oh, my goodness.

You know, particularly as a he was an undergraduate or postgrad, wasn't he, or something. He's like 21 straight out of uni. And you don't expect that in somebody that you revere.

You know, when you first join a company, it's like, oh, my goodness, this person's God. They're the person that can hire and fire me. They're saying, I don't know how to do that and I need help.

It's like, really? Yeah, but that's actually why you're there. And it's like, oh, yeah, of course. And for me, it was exactly the same thing.

It was teaching through behaviour and values or behaviour based on values and principles. So and again, you know, we spoke about this in the first half of it comes back to trust, values, principles that these things happen. But that's what was really impressive for me is that affected him from when he was like 21-years-old.

I don't know how old he is now. He said he was 130. So that's a long time.

But it means that they stick and that they mean something and they're important to him. And it's foundational and that's carried on with him. I mean, it'd be interesting, I think.

What is he like as a leader? Well, yeah, I mean, well, all we have to do is reach out to him and say, can I buy you a coffee and ask some questions? I mean, what I took from that because I obviously started my career. I started off thinking I wanted to be a lawyer and spent, you know, did the law degree and the LPC and then worked in a law firm for two law firms for a total of about four and a half years. And one of the things that I definitely had people I would call mentors outside in my personal life, but in my work life, there was no one.

And I know those were horrific for you. I hated every day going into the office. I didn't do anything that was worthwhile.

You know, the work I was doing wasn't great. And I sort of was waiting for something to change. And actually, I think back and go, had I been able to feel like I could find someone that could mentor me again, not in an official way, but just give me a bit more of a heads up about what life was going to be like if you carry on down that path or what was expected of me.

It was only when I left that and started doing development and working in other companies, I was like, oh, well, this is this is fun. This is, you know, you find those mentors where you go, oh, that's why this way of working is so much better. So, yeah, if you can find people when you're younger that can have such a different effect on the rest of your life.

The other thing that I wanted to briefly touch on was when he was talking about educating new startups. One of the things that is never taught in schools, it appears, is finance and looking after your own money. And you sort of have to make it work as you get a job and then you start to spend money, you get a mortgage or a car or whatever.

And at no point has anyone said this is the way that you should be trying to work, because finance is something that, you know, if you as long as you don't get into too much debt or if you are getting into debt, it's controlled and you know it's not accidental, then you don't end up in this debt spiral and then end up becoming bankrupt or whatever. It's so vitally important that it should be taught in schools. The fact that he's teaching it to new businesses, I mean, in some respects is a bit scary that you've got these people going, yeah, I'm going to start a business, but I'm actually completely broke.

When I say that, I don't mean that, you know, circumstances have meant that you haven't got a job, you know, you're broke from that perspective. It's more that you can't run your finances. You know, you might have a job, you're running your finances and actually you just keep gambling or you have a really expensive habit or something, you know, you just keep wanting to buy sports cars that you can't afford on finance and it turns out that you don't have any money.

It's that sort of trying to prevent that and get into good financial practices. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

I do think that financial planning and financial education is just so vital. I think, you know, bringing that back into sort of more of taking it forward into the business environment. I think it's understanding as well about one of the hardest things to do then is understand scale because there are lots of different ways to finance a business, for example, and one of them is, you know, everyone just thinks I'll just get an angel investor and they'll give me a million quid and then I'll make 10 million and then we'll get another round of investment, you know, and that'll be 20 million and then we'll be a hundred million and there's no concept of, do you know how hard that is? Do you know the questions? I mean, Jeff did touch on some of the questions that they ask, you know, he was talking about SaaS businesses and saying, I want £2 million recurring revenue, I want 50% a year growth on growth - and that's 10% of what they're interested in.

So the numbers have got to stack up. And then second, it's like, well, I'm going to rip apart the leadership team and go, I really need to know that these people are going to do what they say they do. And this guy doesn't spend, you know, I give, we give them $20-million and we spend $10 million on buying all the leadership team a Tesla and a jet, you know.

Well, it's interesting as well because those numbers that he was talking about, he's obviously looking at later stage companies. Yeah. A startup is not going to have $2 million ARR.

But like for some of the earliest stage ones, you know, I talked to quite a lot of people who are early-stage companies and if they have had investment, there is, there's a relaxation that you go, I've got that money in the bank. That's, that's good. And, you know, you can then get a bit sloppy with what you're spending money on.

And sometimes actually you do need that, you know, if you, you might need to get a new laptop and actually if that makes you feel more productive, then it's worthwhile because you also have to perform a task rather than going, I'll just go for the cheapest thing and it's horrible and I hate it. But also the, the, one of the issues that I've personally found with, with running the business and it's the, you know, how much money you've got and you're trying to forecast things and that's impossible because, you know, it could, the arrow could go, you know, through the roof or it could just trickle along the bottom. But also all of the expenses, there's so much that goes into it.

You know, there, there are the taxes that you have to pay, which you might not be expecting. VAT is such a horrible one because in the early days you're making more expenses. So actually you get money back on VAT and then suddenly you get clients and then you go, oh, I've got a £3,000 VAT bill because I've invoiced this one client.

You go, ah, that's, um, yeah, I hadn't, hadn't thought about that because I'd sort of been used to getting money back from the government. Um, and the taxes around, um, paying, paying yourself. So when I first paid myself a salary and went, oh, there's actually, there are a lot more taxes in here than I was expecting.

Ah, that's, um, that changes a few things. So it's, it's, there's so much to think about, but it's, it's trying, as you said, be, be really, be really pernickety about it and keep an eye on it. But I think that's, it's also, it's understanding that everything that you do, cause one of the other things about, you know, being a startup is, um, you know, when I started this and it was just me, there is a belief that you sort of go, well, it's just my time.

It doesn't cost anything. Actually everything your time does cost because, you know, you, you lose today. You've still got to pay for, you know, three meals a day or, you know, for new clothes for, for, for that day, whatever it is, you know, everything costs.

And it's one of the big issues that I see with so many teams and so many companies is they don't appreciate that all time costs. So if you have a daily standup and you've got 10 people and it takes an hour, that's 10 hours worth of time that you've paid for, for people to stand around where most of them probably aren't listening. So it's like, try to try to appreciate everything costs money and try to keep that, keep control of it.

I wouldn't say keep it low, but make sure that it doesn't slip. Oh, you understand what it costs in the first place. Yeah.

That, you know, just that realisation that yes, average, you know, my business, if it's got 20 people in that's 20 times, eight hours a day, that's 160 hours a day that you're paying for. Yeah. So how do you use those? You know, Stephen Bartlett's famous for talking about his tokens, isn't he? We get eight tokens a day.

How are you going to use them? Are you going to place those bets? So one of the last kind of silly, I called them, well the education one wasn't silly. I wanted to just chuck in one silly question. I think I had a couple, um, uh, in there.

 Um, but this one was about, there seems to be this fascination with, um, morning routines for successful people. And I've got no idea if this guy's successful or not. I assume because of all those things he's done that this guy didn't, you know, he's not on the bread line.

He's not living out cardboard boxes. And if he's a venture capitalist, um, then he's got, you know, a few pounds and pence in the bank. So based on that, it was like, well, what's your morning routine? Um, what did, I mean, was that a stupid thing to ask him or, or what did you think to be an answer? I mean, it was.

No, I thought that it's very interesting because again, you're sort of talking about the difference between the Hollywood startup CEO type person and, you know, normal people where, yeah, you know, getting, yeah, get, get it going to bed and getting up at the same time. You know, so many podcasts I'm listening to now are saying that's actually essential for your long-term health. Yeah.

Um, so that, you know, that makes complete sense to me. Um, I have to say, I loved his office. I thought it looked more like a home than, than my home does.

He didn't have any guitars up.

No, no. Uh, well I've put them up just so that they show in this video, obviously.

They're your wife's aren't they?

Yeah.

Um, but no, I think it is important because it also brings it down to, to realism where it's, you know, when I think it was Mark Wahlberg who had his calendar, his daily calendar leaked. And you just think that's, that's firstly not, I don't, I don't believe personally that that's sustainable.

Um, he must be training for something, but also I feel like all of that just promotes this idea that that's the way that you've got to be in order to be successful. And actually we need to, you need to know what works for you and what doesn't. I mean, we've both talked about how we're stopping drinking so much coffee because of things that we've been told and myths and rumours and all of that.

Um, but personally I do feel better for drinking less coffee. Um, so that's an improvement that that's working for me. And it's all about those little incremental improvements, but also trying to, trying to come up with a way that you can inject that into your life so that that can be your routine so that you can be a better person.

Um, you know, it's just, one of the things I look at those routines and go, first of all, um, he's either got a lot of money or no kids. You know, if you say something, yeah, I'm up at five o'clock in the morning, you know, and I do an hour and a half at the gym and then I go and do an hour of Pilates and then I have, you know, this, I go to this same place and I get a coffee in this, you know, kind of unicorn poo food that, that no one normally eats and costs a million pounds. You're loving the unicorns at the moment.

And then, you know, I start work at seven 30 and I do an hour and a half of, I just read my emails and I, you know, I, I checked in my broke and I do this thing and then I start the day and I think. I've what you, you must be the most selfish person on the planet that where does your family come to? Where's walking the dog? Where's, you know, kind of the kids are screaming and shouting or they need, where are my shoes? You know, all that kind of stuff. Does that happen now? What Mark Wahlberg, the example you said, I'm sure he doesn't live on his own.

He's got a wife and children and he's probably got an entourage. Yeah. And trainers and everyone else that, yeah.

Yeah. He's not there. Yes, exactly.

I was just going to say cooking. He's not the one that over the stove going, right. I've got to, I've got to wait for this to boil down.

Yeah. He's got his own personal chef, you know, so it really does because these people are so influential to people that, as you say, I think the key bit there that you said was that if you don't do that, you're not going to be successful. Yeah.

Bullshit. Yeah. Absolutely.

I was that word 50 times. I would say it into their faces. Now you're an outlier.

They're a complete outlier. I would say 99.9% of people will probably do that once a year. The rest of you are like, oh, I can't be arsed.

It's raining. Oh, I'm not going to go out for a run this morning. Yeah.

It takes an immense amount of energy, will, selfishness, if you want to put it for a better word, to have that much focus inwardly on yourself to be successful. Yeah. I mean, it's sustainable.

It's also, it's, it's too inflexible. If you're living with, I mean, you know, I know some people who are, you know, they subscribe to the 5am club, but they get up at 5am and then spend most of the morning just sat looking at a computer screen because they're exhausted. You think, well, but they got up at five, so they're going to be successful.

Um, but you know, it doesn't, it's about flexibility, everything about this stuff is about flexibility and rolling with the punches and thinking about the punches. I can't, I think it was Muhammad Ali. I think it was, it was one of the main named boxers that you know about saying everyone has a plan, a boxing plan until they get punched and then everything goes out the window and it's like, yeah, that's, you know, how many days do you wake up, go right today, I'm going to do this, this, and this, and you turn on your computer and the first thing where you go, all of that's not going to happen now because I've got to focus on this instead.

So yeah, it's, that's reality. Everything's just levers that you're pulling and try to just try to make sure the ones you're pulling on the hardest have the most positive effect on your life. Yeah.

Yeah. And don't get upset if, if you can't do something, you know, be, be, embrace the flexibility. So if something goes wrong, you can cope with that.

I felt that Jeff's response was a very valiant attempt to say it's actually quite boring. It was, it's quite not boring. Okay.

I mean, it's actually quite normal. I just, I get up and go to bed at about the same time. I don't really do much.

I don't have this kind of massive exercise regime. I just kind of, that's kind of it. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's so, so true. Action's the best.

Yeah. Yeah. I thought it was great.

I think that, you know what, that's what people need to hear. We're not really, we're kind of, go to bed kind of roughly about the same time. No, so I can get up nice and early and, you know, whatever, come into the office.

It's only five minutes away. Yeah. Rather than, yeah.

I was going to say we've, we've been rambling on quite a long now, but yeah, I mean, it's, it was a really interesting chat. I think we definitely need to have him back a bit more and maybe even delve a bit more into some of the, the training that he gives to startups. Cause I think that's, that's quite relevant.

I think it's important for companies to try to maintain more of a startup mentality so that they can keep innovating as well if they're in the creative fields. Um, so yeah, I think, uh, it'd be interesting to, to get back. Yeah.

I think you're right. Drilling down and kind of compartmentalising it and picking maybe one or two subjects rather than just an initial, you know, what we've done is got, got to know Jeff this way, but being able to delve into these, you know, kind of in more deeply would I think be fascinating. Um, and I, yeah, I definitely want to get these books.

I want to kind of understand the guy more from reading the books. So that's on my list. And if anybody out there is, if you've read his books and would like to comment and talk to us about those, we'd love to hear how maybe they've influenced you.

If they changed your life, you know, have they, have they had a dramatic effect on you or the opposite? You hated them. I mean, that's okay. Right.

I mean, you put stuff out there and you hope that everyone loves it, but some people don't and emotional reaction is what you want apathy not. So don't talk to us, you know, if you're apathetic about it, then don't get in touch, but if you've got a reaction and we'd love to hear it, if you're apathetic about it, don't bother. Jon, as always, thank you very much for your very insightful.

Uh, look at the interview. I think you've added a lot of value to that for people and, you know, kind of brought it back down to, to earth. I just get locked up in the, you know, kind of the fascination with these people.

I love these, you know, doing these interviews and podcasts and things. So, but you, you're great. You bring it back down to earth and, you know, um, you know, see it, see it with a different lens than I do.

So I think hopefully people get a lot out of that and, uh, uh, and it will mean something to them. So that's, it's been fantastic. Yeah.

I hope so. Um, yeah, pleasure. Talk to you again soon.

Thanks Adam. Cheers.